After stem cell transplantation, the donated immune cells sometimes attack the patients' bodies. This is known as graft versus host disease or GvHD. Researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and the Universitätsklinikum Regensburg (UKR) have shown that GvHD is much less common when certain microbes are present in the gut. In the future, it may be possible to deliberately bring about this protective composition of the microbiome. Stem cell transplantation can save the lives of patients suffering ...

BEIJING, Dec. 19 (Xinhua) -- A team of Chinese researchers used a novel theory to invent a new type of ultrathin optical crystal with high energy efficiency, laying the foundation for next-generation laser technology. Prof. Wang Enge from the School of Physics, Peking University, recently told Xinhua that the Twist Boron Nitride (TBN) made by the team, with a micron-level thickness, is the thinnest optical crystal currently known in the world. Compared with traditional crystals of the same thickness, its energy efficiency is raised by 100 to 10,000 times. Wang, also an ...

Could a Drug Prevent Hearing Loss from Loud Music and Aging?  Researchers have found a gene that links deafness to cell death in the inner ear in humans – creating new opportunities for averting hearing loss.  A person’s hearing can be damaged by loud noise, aging and even certain medications, with little recourse beyond a hearing aid or cochlear implant.     But now, UCSF scientists have achieved a breakthrough in understanding what is happening in the inner ear during hearing loss, laying the groundwork for preventing deafness.     The research, ...

DETROIT (Jan. 8, 2024) – Henry Ford Health has earned two distinguished recognitions, the HX Pinnacle of Excellence Award® and HX Guardian of Excellence Award®, both in the category of Consumer Experience and granted by Press Ganey, a leading organization focused on patient experience measurement and healthcare performance improvement. These awards reflect Henry Ford Health's unwavering commitment to providing an exceptional care experience for each of its patients and their families. "We are immensely proud to receive the Pinnacle of Excellence and Guardian of Excellence Awards from Press Ganey,” said Bob Riney, President and ...

Mycelial fibers, the fibrous cells found in fruiting mushroom bodies, have gained momentum as a sustainable material for making leather and packaging owing to their excellent formability. Recently, a team of researchers from Shinshu University, Japan, has found a simple way of obtaining mycelial fibers, called “mycelial pulp,” from fruiting mushroom bodies and bleaching them using sunlight while keeping their mycelial structures intact. Every year, humans generate millions of tons of waste, and almost 38% of that waste ends up in a landfill. A significant portion of it is made up of plastic or petroleum-based ...

School connectedness – the degree to which students feel part of their school community – influences more than grades. For Black students, it’s a protective factor against depression and aggressive behavior later in life, according to a Rutgers University-New Brunswick study. “Our data provide fairly strong evidence for the idea that the experiences Black adolescents have in their school impacts their long-term mental health,” said Adrian Gale, an assistant professor in the Rutgers School ...

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a major global health concern impacting millions and causing symptoms like palpitations, dyspnea, fatigue, dizziness, and chest discomfort. Furthermore, these symptoms reduce patients’ quality of life and lead to increased mortality and morbidity. The medical community agrees that epicardial adipose tissue (EAT), chronic inflammation, imbalances in the autonomic nervous system (ANS), stretch-induced fibrosis, and genetic alterations are the main factors that influence AF pathogenesis. Despite extensive research efforts focused on uncovering the underlying mechanisms ...

Just like computers, the Internet, and smartphones have become commonplace in our daily lives, artificial intelligence and robotics (AIR) are the next technologies in line set to drastically change how we interact with the world and among ourselves. Various AI-driven applications are already in widespread use, such as Siri, Google Assistant, and ChatGPT, and both industrial- and consumer-grade robots are becoming increasingly capable and accessible. In our modern societies, where people rely more and more on AIR systems to perform tasks, it’s essential to prepare children and teenagers to understand ...

Loss of bone mineral density (BMD) with age is an important cause of osteoporosis (deterioration of bone tissue), which has been reported as one of the leading causes of falls among older adults in Japan. This leads to fractures that require long-term nursing. Prevention of osteoporosis in the aging population can thus help decrease the burden of disease and healthcare costs substantially.   Early lifestyle habits can largely influence health and disease onset in old age. In this regard, physical activities ...

Within the next 10 years, it’s projected that up to 50% of United States adults will be affected by obesity, which is associated with cognitive impairment and dementia.  Investigators at Michigan Medicine found that people with obesity who underwent bariatric surgery had stable cognition two years later.  Researchers say it suggests that bariatric surgery may mitigate the natural history of cognitive decline expected in people with obesity. The results are published in the Journal of Nutrition, Health & Aging. “Since individuals with obesity ...

How can climate policy be made more just and fair? IIASA researchers have synthesized different dimensions of justice into a framework that can be used by climate scientists and policymakers, explaining how previous research has neglected many potential justice positions and how these can be implemented in policy contexts. Dealing with climate change is not just about the environment – it is also about justice and fairness. This includes how we transition to cleaner ways of living, the different impacts on various groups of people, and who is responsible ...

Philadelphia, January 8, 2024 – Researchers from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) have developed a new AI-powered algorithm to help understand how different cells organize themselves into particular tissues and communicate with one another. This new tool was tested on two types of cancer tissues to reveal how these “neighborhoods” of cells interact with one another to evade therapy, and more studies could reveal more information about the function of these cells in the tumor ...

Prime editing, a versatile form of gene editing that can correct most known disease-causing genetic mutations, now has a new vehicle to deliver its machinery into cells in living animals. A team of researchers at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard has engineered virus-like particles to deliver prime editors to cells in mice at a high enough efficiency to rescue a genetic disorder. In the new work published today in Nature Biotechnology, the team adapted engineered virus-like particles (eVLPs) that they had previously designed to carry base editors — ...

The origin of Earth and the Solar System inspires scientists and the public alike. By studying the present state of our home planet and other objects in the Solar System, researchers have developed a detailed picture of the conditions when they evolved from a disk made of dust and gas surrounding the infant sun some 4.5 billion years ago. Three rings hinting at two planets With the breathtaking progress made in star and planet formation research aiming at far-away celestial objects, we can now investigate the conditions in environments around young stars and compare them to the ones derived for the early Solar System. Using the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large ...

Unknown germs are a common occurrence in hospitals. Researchers at the University of Basel have spent many years collecting and analyzing them. They have identified many new species of bacteria, some of which are significant for clinical practice. Bacterial infections can be treated more efficiently if the cause of the disease is known. In most cases, all it takes to identify a pathogen is an analysis in a medical laboratory. Sometimes, however, the standard methods are insufficient – for example, if the species of bacteria has not yet been classified or ...

Including patients as partners for making decisions about their medical treatments is an important aspect of patient-centered care. A new study from England examined choices that patients with breast cancer make when considering where to have surgery for their condition and assessed how policies that offer such choices might affect inequalities in the health care system. The findings are published by Wiley online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society. For the study, investigators analyzed data from the National Health Service (NHS), the publicly ...

Certain populations of mosquitoes are more heat tolerant and better equipped to survive heat waves than others, according to new research from Washington University in St. Louis. This is bad news in a world where vector-borne diseases are an increasingly global health concern. Most models that scientists use to estimate vector-borne disease risk currently assume that mosquito heat tolerances do not vary. As a result, these models may underestimate mosquitoes’ ability to spread diseases in a warming world. Researchers led by Katie M. Westby, a senior scientist at Tyson Research Center, Washington ...

PHILADELPHIA – Increasing patients’ out of pocket costs for HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), medications, which have been shown to dramatically reduce the risk of HIV infection, could lead to a significant reduction in PrEP use and a rise in HIV infection rates, according to a new study co-led by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The study, published today in Health Affairs, was designed, in part, to explore the impact that out-of-pocket cost increases could have, depending on the outcome of an ongoing court case challenging certain ...

Orlando, Fla - More than two in five U.S. adults suffer from obesity, an epidemic that continues to trend upward. While bariatric surgery is an extremely effective treatment option, a new national survey by Orlando Health reveals common stigmas that may deter those who qualify for surgery from pursuing the treatment they need. “Treatment plans for obesity are tailored to each individual patient based on things like body mass index and existing medical conditions and may include medication, lifestyle changes, counseling and bariatric surgery,” said Andre Teixeira, MD, medical ...

The spectacular explosion of the mine at Hawthorn Ridge – a fortified German front-line position in the First World War – marked the beginning of the Battle of the Somme, and remains one of the best-known pieces of film from the whole conflict. More than 60ft below the surface, British miners had dug a gallery for more than 900 metres from their lines and packed it with 40,000 lbs of explosives. It was one of 19 mines placed beneath German front positions that were detonated on 1st July, 1916 to mark the start of the offensive. But the detonation of the ...

A recent study found changes in blood flow in the retina could explain why some migraine patients experience visual symptoms. The findings could represent a long-sought observable marker for migraines that doctors can use to aid in the clinical treatment of the condition. While patients with migraines often experience symptoms such as pain around the eye, sensitivity to light, blind spots and visual blurring, the mechanisms behind those symptoms have not been well understood. UCLA Health researchers used a non-invasive imaging technique, known as optical coherence tomography angiography, or OCTA, ...

A network of scientists across the globe have identified more than 700 plant genera named for women. This is a nearly twenty-fold increase in the number of genera linked to women before the group started working on the list.  The project, which aimed to highlight the contribution of women to botany, was the result of social media conversations about plants named for people.   What began as a simple question about how many and which plant genera were named for women evolved into a global network of scientists who built ...

When the body encounters bacteria, viruses or harmful substances, its innate immune cells, neutrophils, assemble at the site to combat the invader. Bacteria and viruses have ways to avoid these defenses, however. Yersinia pestis, the bacteria that causes bubonic and pneumonic plague, for example, can hide from the immune system, allowing it to replicate in the body unhindered until it can overwhelm the host. This ability allowed Y. pestis to spread bubonic plague across Europe in the 14th Century, killing a third of the European population. While plague may not be a serious threat to human health in modern times, researchers at the University of Louisville are studying Y. ...

A paper published in Nature Communications Biology contributes to the growing appreciation for the outsize role that microbes play in everything from human digestion to crop yields: Microbes in the soil—fungi in this case—appear to be influencing forest diversity on a global scale. Forests on Earth exhibit a marked gradient from the equator toward the poles: Tropical forests near the equator tend to include a large number of different species, whereas forests nearer the poles support less plant diversity. One explanation for this phenomenon maintains that soil pathogens, including bacteria and fungi, help create this gradient. ...

How can health care systems increase diversity and inclusion in their workforce? UC Davis Health, recognized by Forbes as a "Best Employer in California", has developed a road map for increasing workforce diversity across the industry. While California banned the consideration of race or ethnicity in hiring at public institutions in 1996, UC Davis Health has since come up with a holistic outreach and local recruitment plan that has proven effective. And that approach is now receiving global attention through a new case study published in New England Journal ...